an insatiable appetite for my region by VINCENT NATTRESS

Chickincest Part Two: Little Turkey Farm on the Prairie

This is the second part of my series, Chickincest, which discusses the issues surrounding poultry food production. This is a story of the unintended consequences that have brought us to where we are, what a sustainable system might look like, and what it would take to get there. In this part I try to clarify just what is meant by the term “heritage breeds”.

Coupeville is a really small town. I was at the quarterly Lion’s Club blood draw, the place where you will meet all of the town’s luminaries, and I ran into Al Sherman. The Sherman’s were one of the original families that homesteaded what is now Ebey’s Prairie in the 1850’s, and there are a lot of Sherman’s here still. Because I am trying to gain an historical perspective on what farming used to be like here, I asked Al what his family was farming when he was a kid. I was pretty surprised by the answer.

First of all he explained to me that growing up in the Depression Era there was nothing glamorous about farming. There were a lot of people farming because there was a lot of poverty and folks were growing food in order to feed themselves. His family, it turns out, was raising turkeys. In fact they were raising a heritage breed, the Bronze Turkey, right here on Ebey’s Prairie.

But it isn’t really true that the Shermans were raising “heritage breeds,” because there was no such thing as a heritage breed in 1935, or 1960 for that matter. They were raising “Standard Breeds,” the ones described in the American Standard of Perfection, the book first published in 1873, which clearly describe and defined each breed of chicken, turkey, duck or goose. The Standard of Perfection came into existence because of a desire on the part of the newly formed American Poultry Association to improve the overall quality of birds raised in this country. The book describes in excruciating detail every single characteristic of each breed. It tells the breeder what the weight, size, coloration and all other attributes of a given breed must be in order to bear that name.

When it comes to turkeys, there are exactly eight breeds listed in the Standard of Perfections: Bronze, Narragansett, White Holland, Black, Slate, Bourbon Red, Beltsville Small White, and Royal Palm. The descriptions within each breed are very, very specific. For example the description of Bronze Turkeys says this:

“Body conformation… is of great importance. The body should be broad, round and the breast full, which gives the male a very sturdy appearance… The head should be of good size, and the eyes possess a bold expression… “

The description of the finer points of the feathers of the bird’s tail continues:

“Each feather evenly and distinctly marked transversely with parallel lines of brown…the wider the better, lustrous, copperish bronze band extending across the feather, bordered on each side by a narrow but distinct band of intense black; the feather terminating in a wide edge of pure white. The more distinct the colors throughout the whole plumage, the better”

If your turkey has any feathers that are entirely white on any part of its plumage, or if it has tail feathers that are pure black, sorry, that bird is disqualified: it is not a Bronze turkey according to the Standard of Perfection.

This book takes a serious, no-nonsense approach to grading birds. It is important to note that new breeds have entered the Standard of Perfection since 1873. The Beltsville Small White did not come into the fold until 1951.

The creation of the American Poultry Association and the publication of the Standard of Perfection arise out of a broader historical context. This movement towards competitive improvement, not just in poultry, but in all livestock and all crop plants, was ubiquitous in the 19th century. That is, in essence, why the county and state fair system arose. Every county fair was a chance for farmers to enter what they raised to be judged for quality against their peers. The Standard of Perfection set the bar for poultry and provided a way to evaluate all fowl to see if they measured up against a broader, uniform, national standard, not just against the folks across the county. If your birds do not conform to the Standard, they would not do well at the fair, period. At fairs, this is still the standard, almost a century and a half later.

These Standard Breeds of turkeys, chickens, ducks and geese as described in The Standard of Perfection are what we now call our Heritage Breeds. Those who care about these breeds and continue to maintain them see Heritage Breeds as just that: a crucial part of our heritage as a nation. They are, after all, the birds that feed our fore fathers.

°°°°°

Getting back to Al Sherman here in Coupeville, he told me about how he and his brother Roger were able to grow their business considerably from their beginning in 1935 through the 1960’s. At their peak the Sherman’s were raising over 100,000 Turkeys, all on pasture. Having grown up here in the 1970’s and 1980’s and never seeing any turkeys, I asked Al what happened to their business. The story he told me, the story of the rise and fall of their independent poultry farm in western Washington, is a microcosm of what happened to the poultry industry as a whole in the 20th century.

When the Shermans started raising turkeys they ran an integrated, self-sufficient business. They were members of a large, regional poultry cooperative that helped them with all of the non-farming aspects of getting turkeys to market, namely packaging and distributions. These aspects can make up a larger percentage of total cost than the farming side of the equation. They had their own breeding stock of Bronze Turkeys, which they maintained as the source of their own flock. The raised or “grew out” many birds, but the breeding stock was also another source of revenue for the Shermans. Because they were able to hatch more poults than they needed, these poults were sold to other regional farmers who were part of the Co-op. It was an era when a poultry farmer could still control his own destiny, working as part of a regional food system.

Of course this glorious period prior to the vertical integration of the poultry industry was not without its problems. Al mentioned, with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement, how many of the poultry producers on Whidbey during World War II processed their chickens and turkeys in Oak Harbor, on a pier that was built on the bay specifically for that purpose: they just dump the viscera and waste right into the bay. I had to ask him if there was good crabbing in the bay during that period. This practice eventually stopped when the adjacent Navy base complained about it.

The system did change from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Levels of federal and state regulation were added, some very much for good, others not so. Refrigerated transportation became the norm after WWII, and growers began competing for market share not only with other local farmers, but on a broader regional and national playing field. By the 1950’s the Shermans were raising tens of thousands of birds each year, all raised on pasture, but the pressure to get bigger was getting greater because margins were shrinking.

But then, in the 1960’s, the market started to change rapidly. A grower in Sonoma County California had developed a new breed of broad breasted bird that had a lot more white meat and which grew a lot faster than any of the Standard Breeds. This new breed rapidly spread through the industry, and it had a strong downward impact on the price of turkey. Eventually the pressure to change away from Bronze Turkeys became irresistible. The directive came down from the Coop itself: they would only process and distribute the new, white-feathered birds, and growers would have to buy them from the Coop hatchery. What had begun as an incremental change had led the Shermans to become one layer in an integrated, vertical system.

The pressure to produce more and more became greater – as a result of falling prices for the finished birds – the Shermans realized that they could not compete raising birds on pasture in our climate. Because they were raising the birds out-of-doors, they had a limited season in Western Washington. Even in the dry, rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains where Coupeville is situated, they still could not put birds out on pasture earlier than about mid-April. Now that they were competing with a nation-wide market, that represented a big disadvantage over other farmers in warmer, dryer climates. They could not compete with warmer climates or with the new wave of CAFO producers raising birds indoors. By 1974, two years prior to my family’s arrive here, the Shermans were done raising turkeys.

By the 1980’s the Coop itself would dissolve. By the mid 1990’s the last remaining Northwest producer, an Oregon Co-op, would close too, ending decades of commercial production of turkeys in the Pacific Northwest. Today there is not a turkey industry here at all, with the exception of the few micro producers raising heritage birds for CSAs or for the Farmers’ Market.

One telling aspect of my conversation with Al was that he does not seem to bemoan the loss of the heritage birds. I talked to him about how one local farmer sells their heritage turkeys for $100 each, and he just sort of laughed. “You know what I do when I want a turkey?” He asked with a glint in his eye, “I go to Safeway and buy the one that’s cheapest.” He does not think there is not a lick of difference between a heritage breed and a commercially farmed hybrid.

I happen to disagree with that strongly. I have used heritage birds for several years – almost 100 of them a year when I was at Meadowood – and I think they are completely different and superior to hybrid birds. The flesh of the breast is denser, far less chalky, and possesses a real turkey flavor. The birds must be prepared differently than Americans are now used to preparing turkey.

Another major issue with the Heritage Breed birds is that for almost all American consumers price is the absolute number one concern. Turkey is a commodity and there is no perceived difference between one type and the next in the eyes of the vast majority of Americans. If price continues to be king and there is not some significant segment of the market that can see the additional value in consuming Heritage Breeds, then these birds risk going the way of the Dodo.

As a result of the hurdles that must be overcome, Heritage Breed producers need to make consumer education a big part of their work as well. Heritage farmers need to be more than just farmers. They need to be cooking instructors, historians, and perhaps more importantly, evangelists for the importance of preserving our nations Standard Breeds.

In my next installment I am going to talk about one of the few producers who has survived and even flourished raising Heritage Breed poultry and why all of us should be doing our best to help him and others succeed.

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I have to agree with you and feel sad about the other fellow. Soon he might be Eating Turkeys from China, with warnings about maximum helpings per month because of pollutants like heavy metals. And he will bemoan the problems that come with “cheapest prices anywhere.” Or he might miss the connection since its easier to follow the easiest path and skip/ignore the reflection on “bigger” issues, easier than to do the extra work and pay for it and run the brain overtime…

So like with so much else, old school has become “ritzy” and exclusive for just those willing and able to ante up the extra money. Plain Jane bird now is Lady Boutiqiue Bronze Beauty and she has a bloodline going back to the Mayflower and each carcass comes with a cute booklet that describes all of that and has a picture of her home and makes you feel its so special to pay the higher price.

The poor ole boy has fallen for the great “NEW- IMPROVED” line. And the high rollers have fallen for something as bad which I can’t find a name for right now.

Slow food. Fork, meet local bird. Local bird, thanks for being a regular time proven bird that fits outside the fast food box. Before you came along we had to externalize the kitchen sloppins out to compost. Now you add value to them sloppins, you and do it much better than GenticoLabs’ wharehousefarm ready pullets (just add antibiotics and …)ever will

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Welcome

This blog is an exploration of my region's food, season by season. I will focus on foraging, farming and how to cook what I find. I will also discuss food politics and the history of what we eat and why.

Foraging often reveals traditions that make this region unique. I will do my best to remind us of some of these vanishing traditions, because they reveal a lot about our cultural history.

Agriculture shapes the landscape we live in. Right now farming is undergoing a critical transition. More than ever we all need to understand the importance of diverse, regional food production, for what it means to our region, our bucolic surroundings, the safety and stability of our food system and our own personal health.

Exploring these food issues reveals a lot about our environmental and economic issues too. I will ask questions about the ways in which we are changing our food systems and how, as a result, our food is changing us.

This is a bountiful area, but also a changing area, and population growth, environmental degradation and vanishing food traditions threaten to change the way we feed ourselves forever.

Food is a lens through which to view where we are and how we got here. Because of this we can begin to ask the question about what to do next, so that we can live our lives more deliciously while leaving something behind that is worthy of the next generation.